Dean's Message

Dean Susan Poser
Dean Susan Poser

Happy New Year and Welcome Back to spring semester! I hope you had a restful and enjoyable break.

The faculty had a busy semester last fall, so here are some updates. One change that will affect all current first-year students is that Constitutional Law will become a 4-credit class next year, instead of 3-credit. In addition, the faculty adopted a new Law and Gerontology dual-degree program, a program of concentrated study in Intellectual Property, and an online version of our LLM program in Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law. Although this will not affect you directly, you might be interested to know that we have changed the first-year curriculum for the incoming class in 2012. Torts will be 4 credits instead of 6, and we are introducing a new, 2-credit class into the first year on Perspectives in International Law. We hired a new faculty member as well. Professor Adam Thimmesch will be in here next fall, teaching Business Associations, Corporate Finance, and Tax. Our hiring process continues this semester so we may add one or two more new faculty members.

You will notice still more changes around the building this week. We are installing glass panels along the railing that overlooks the student lounge. This has been done entirely for safety reasons, as the railing was not up to code and dangerous for young visitors to the law college. We have renovated the Union Bank computer room on the south side of the library. This will now function as a large seminar room, starting next fall, after we acquire some furniture for it. Union Bank made a generous gift to help us with that project. The video monitors have been moved and the glass enclosed bulletin board taken down. The video board will contain daily updates on class changes. Finally, we expect chairs and tables to be delivered this week for the lobby so that it can once again be a comfortable gathering place.

Best wishes for a successful semester and please let the dean's office know if there is anything we can do to assist you.